I spun through space, pulled through by forces stronger than gravity. Singing of stars had long-ago turned to screaming, and it all pierced me like sharpened spears aiming for my heart. I wanted to close my eyes and forget my own name, but the end of the tunnel came too soon for that.

Falling out into a place between places, I would have collapsed, but a hand held me up. I panted, trying to regain the feeble breath in my chest.

"Hello, Weaver." The Spider grinned at me. "So glad you could join me."

I staggered away from him, wrenching my arm out of his loose grip. "You dragged me through!"

He let go without much resistance, wiping his hand on the front of his shirt as if I was the one one dirty, and he was not covered in a fine layer of grime. "Your hesitation annoyed me."

"What is wrong with you!?" I yelled, but the breath ran out after my last word, leaving me gasping for air. My chest rattled as it tried to restart the processes for pulling in air, and succeeded after a few weak coughs.

The Spider seemed unconcerned, breezing past me. "I am tired of waiting, Weaver. Now, let us see if you are worthy of the name."

The dimensions seemed devoid of space or reference, save for an electric weaving that stretched in all directions as far as the eye could see. It staggered me, and my stomach rolled as it tried to find reference but could only continue to search and search. The Kekkai Barrier.

The Spider reached into ratty pockets and withdrew a handful of spherical red stones, tossing them like a handful of marbles a child might ready for play. Bloodstones.

He grinned at me as realization dawned over me, and I knew that he knew. He tossed them over his shoulder and they shattered against the crackling yellow electricity of the barrier. Where they had touched, though, the yellow energy of the barrier hissed and turned red.

The red color spread slightly, like spilled wine over a carpet, and the energy dissipated. A tight weaving of a carpet pulled apart in a worn-out section, a hole appeared in the barrier and demons poured through.

"Kill the weaver," the Spider ordered lazily, barely bothering to gesture towards me.

The horde bore down on me.

I scrambled back, but scant inches would do me no good against axes and swords and claws. "I-!" Words failed me as I tried to order Blue to save me, to stop them, to stop time itself and reverse it back to a time when life hadn't been trying to beat me into submission.

Maybe we were more connected here at the end. Maybe the final linking of my soul to her power meant she could act on my deepest wishes without words. Maybe she didn't care anymore.

Blue came to the forefront, but she lifted my arms to act. Her mouth, moving as mine, shifted into an expression of fury. Her rage, building out of my fear, shaped the world to her will with no regard for the outcome.

I screamed, the agony of her power grating against my unprotected body almost too much to bear. I focused on maintaining the connection; if I lost it, I was certain I would fall down dead.

I tried to imagine a safe place. A place like home, where trees whispered against the wind and birds trilled in the twilight. A place where a friendly face might rise from the stairs cutting into the hill and I would feel welcome.

I could hear the trees calling to me, summoning me to that safe place that was so new but had become home so quickly. Their gentle rhythm overwhelmed the screaming rage of the demon horde. The screaming rage that had become screams of mortal pain. The screams that became silence, a silence filled with the gentle rhythm of trees bending to a soft breeze.

I opened my eyes. Slow to focus, and slower still to process, it took a moment for me to realize that the demons had been turned into a calm grove of young oak trees. Halfway between spring blossom and summer's peak, they were nearly perfect.

The Spider hummed thoughtfully, moving towards me at a casual meander. "Impressive. But you are already dead, aren't you? The shuttle is all but holding you together - I can smell death in the air."

"You can't…" I paused, panting as my heart screamed at me to announce I was dying. "You can't stop me. You hear me?"

"You are heard," the Spider smiled, "but I disagree. However," he stepped to the side, gesturing with an arm. "Please, go ahead."

I hesitated. "What's the trick?" I asked, not willing to step into the radius of his reach to approach the tattered barrier.

He laughed and it was not at all comforting. "No tricks, little Weaver."

"Just tell me!" I cried. "Enough of all of this sneaking and mystery - just tell me what you want!"

He sneered at me. "I want the end. I want unity and completion."

"What does that mean?" I pressed. "You said you're a spider, you've hunted us nearly to extinction, you've been trying to hurt the barrier, but no one can tell me why!"

The Spider leaned close and I could smell the sickly-sweet odor of decay rolling from his body in waves. "Ask yourself, Weaver; how many lies have you found? Where have they brought you? Always back to me."

I recoiled. "You're a liar."

He followed, insisting, "do you believe the Tale to be true?"

"No," I admitted. "Not anymore."

"Let it go. You owe them nothing; you are alone because they made you that way." His breath smelled sour, like a combination of hate and fear.

"Why do you hate us?" I asked, on the edge of tears. I needed to know. If I was going to die, I needed to know.

The Spider's face contorted. "Because none of you have the strength to do what is necessary."

He grabbed me around the throat with his left hand, forcing me back. I screamed - orders to the shuttle, pleadings to god, I can't be sure - clawing at him to release me in a desperate panic.

Trying to pry my fingers under his grasp, I knew immediately when I'd touched the barrier. It caught me like dropping onto a feather bed, like falling backwards onto a trampoline that doesn't push you away, like falling asleep in the backseat of a car.

I lashed out, some command I could not remember lashing out with Blue's ferocious power. A cry of pain from the Spider barely broke through the terror rushing in my ears, but the freedom didn't last.

The threads of the barrier did not push me away, nor did they let me pass completely through. They wove over and behind and through me, finding all the empty spaces between the atoms of my body and filling them with a frenetic, pulsing fury.

Air no longer moved in my lungs, having been filled instead with the electric hum of power. I gasped, my chest shuddering as it tried to pull in much-needed oxygen.

The angry energy of the barrier burned in my body and tears flowed down my cheeks against my will, and if I had been in possession of more air I'm sure I would have howled in agony. I curled in on myself as best I could, holding the shuttle tightly to my chest and curling my short arm around my middle.

I gathered my thoughts not centered on pain and confusion and breathing or lack of breathing and focused, focused all of my remaining energy, on one determined thought: I will Weave the World.

I unraveled.


I can't say whether or not I existed.

There wasn't a 'space' or 'time' around me. I was - or wasn't - existing along with a network of energies that ran through and around my body. The sizzling yellow light of it hurt me, but I couldn't exactly feel physical pain. I also couldn't describe what physical pain should feel like. I also couldn't describe what a physical body should feel like.

The net of energy held me still as I contemplated existence. What was 'I', really? It required a sense of self, of individuality, or mindfulness of time and space. I couldn't even declare if I existed, let alone if I represented some sense of 'me'.

An eternity passed as I tried to decide if I existed as a part of the infinite, or separate from it, and then I wasn't alone anymore.

A young man stood next to me, staring out into the infinite. He looked… he looked very much like me. He had a strong eastern jaw, and dark eyes and hair. He was not terribly tall, and stood with a tired slouch.

Long threads of that yellow light trailed off of his body like tangled fishing line or an extended leash, leading him back to my prison. He had more freedom than I, but seemed so sad.

"I cannot remember her face," he said. His face was a portrait of agony.

There was a discordant chime in the distance – the twang of a poorly tuned chord or one severed in the vast expanse of nothingness.

Tendrils of thread tied around his body flexed and pulled at him – shortening his leash and pulling pieces away – and he barely flinched. The action seemed familiar, terribly so, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

"Whose face?" I asked. My voice sounded lighter than usual - or was it considered quieter? It sounded different than the empty place in my memory that complained that something was off. I couldn't state what my voice should sound like.

He buried his face in his hands. "I made her stay behind – she wanted to, she wanted to help, but I wouldn't…" he trailed off and his eyes went slightly vacant. "What was I saying?"

I couldn't remember either. I didn't know why I couldn't remember, only that it was probably important that I try.

"Come, walk with me," he beckoned. As he waved, the threads holding me tightly to the net of energy seemed to loosen and I was able to step down. The threads lengthened as I followed him, leaving me attached in a similar fashion.

"Have you been here long?" I asked.

He thought for several minutes. An eternity. A minute. A year. "I could not say."

"It must have been so lonely." I had been lonely in my finite infinite undetermined length of time alone.

"I have had companionship such as yours for most of my time," he said thoughtfully. "The clan has followed me after all."

"Clan?" I asked, and the idea summoned a croaking and ancient voice to mind. In a time before recorded years, our great ancestor was a weaver in a village in a field long lost to time, where weaving began.

I must have spoken too softly, as he continued without seeming to hear me. "So many weavers, so many years; I can only imagine how the world has changed."

Our line stretches back for millennia, June.

"What was your clan called?" I asked, raising my voice.

"We are all of the Clan Tkadlec." He raised his arms, gesturing widely at the broad barrier's weaving. The motion drew my gaze up, up, up to see the great yellow weaving in its entirety.

Little patches of blue appeared as a contrasting constellation within the yellow net. So many contrasting patches, all of varying strengths, and I couldn't help but wonder if the yellow expanse was more patch than original fabric. Within each blue patch I could see weathered faces, some nearly faded completely. Faces with noses like mine, jawlines like mine, fates like mine...

It alarmed me and seized the motion of my chest, leaving me to clutch there for some grounding comfort. I was looking for a warm lodestone, some physical presence that had been there for years. But I wasn't really there, I knew. I wasn't really anywhere. The comfort I sought was not there with me.

"What's your name, weaver?" he asked me.

"I…" my mouth closed slowly, opening again once as I tried to remember my name. "I don't remember," I admitted.

"Don't be afraid," he tried to comfort me, "it may come back."

"Who are you?" I asked, searching for a port in the storm.

"I am Dusek." He bowed slightly, respectfully.

Strings that used to be tied to alarm bells in my memory rattled in the emptiness. "That's a nice name," I filled in lamely.

"You remind me of my daughter," he said, "I will call you by her name until you remember your own. Is that alright?"

I fiddled with the hem of my shirt. "I think so."

He smiled, and it seemed proud. "Then I shall call you Lada."

My mind tripped over the word like my feet might stumble over a stone in the road.

"Come, Lada; we have work to do." He gestured for me to follow, and I did.

"What do we do here?" I asked, walking faster to keep up with his confident strides.

"We keep the World together, through the Ways and Waters we keep the peace between the worlds." Gesturing broadly, he seemed to be able to encompass the entire energetic net of blue and yellow in his arms. "It is an honorable responsibility and a terrible legacy."

I frowned. Something about that irritated the inside of my chest. "Why?"

"Our clan was tasked with preserving peace between humans and demons. My sister…" his face fell.

The idea of it irritated the inside of my chest more. I did not know if I was the kind of person who ignored those kinds of pains, so I could only lean into it. "Please, tell me about your sister."

"Dusana. The most skilled of us all, she took great pride in her work, but she did not believe we should strain our skills by working on such a great feat. So… she refused the King of Souls." His expression could only be read as shame. "I left my wife and my daughter, disguised myself as Dusana and took the tool of our weaving, and…"

He looked up at the net, somewhere between fondly and regretfully.

Realization filled my gut with pity. "You made this."

"I am not as skilled as my sister. I had made friends outside of our Clan, and with their skills I was almost… I needed…." he screwed his eyes shut as tears of frustration slipped down his cheeks. "I can remember it almost as though it happened only moments ago, but it is also somehow an eternity."

His voice cracked. "I thought, maybe, I heard her voice once. So far away, so long ago, but only moments ago. I regret it now. I regretted it then. I have seen so many of our clan join me and there is so much loss we have borne."

I thought hard. Had I lost something? I could remember a warm presence, but I wasn't certain if it was supposed to be metal or man. I held my arms up to examine my hand and the shorter length on my left side; I tried to remember why I only had one hand. "Dusek," I asked, "why are we here?"

Getting questions again seemed to soothe the pain of speaking about his past. "We are stewards of the World, Lada. It's our responsibility to keep it safe and repair it when the boundaries are opened."

Nodding as though I understood, confusion still made up most of my thoughts. All of this seemed so important but I just couldn't remember why. I couldn't even remember my name.

He noticed. "Please don't worry, dear Lada; you are home with your Clan now and we will help you remember in time."

"No," I said slowly, "this isn't my home."

Home had old wood floors and smelled like rice paper and sometimes tasted like orange soda. Home felt like laughter and a warm hand in mine. Home looked like… I fought for the image but found it still beyond my reach.

"I know," Dusek agreed sadly, "I cannot remember her face. I cannot remember either."

"But why?" I demanded, frustrated.

"Because we left them behind. It is our shame and our torment."

"I don't want to stay here forever," I blurted out, "I didn't ask for this!"

In the great emptiness that spread beyond the neverending wall of the World - the eternity that lingers in the space between spaces - a small spark of light appeared. It flickered like candlelight barely keeping away the pressing blackness of winter's longest night, but it grew stronger the longer I stared.

"June?!" a voice called through the emptiness.

A word without context but it struck in the empty cathedral inside me. Derelict and dusty, that word opened my doors and blew out the cobwebs that had gathered. Floors took on a rough and hasty shine, and the heavy cloth on my altars was removed.

Golden orange rays pierced through the empty black space, arms of light casting off the veil of eternity. A distant sun, warm and kind, reached out for me. I closed my eyes as the first waves of light touched my face, and it felt like the first dawn of the new year.

That's me, I thought. It sang in chorus in me, repeated in that distant and terrified voice. My opened doors let in the sunshine, but wept in agony as the light flickered away.

Just a taste of revelation made the emptiness so much more painful. "My name is June." I clung to it; a raft of certainty in a void that had become storm-churning seas on a moonless night. I was aware of the empty places and now they frightened me.

"Dusek…" I whispered. "You're Dusek." Dusana's brother - the beginning of the Line; a branch that had been cut. He had called me by his daughter's name - Lada - but the flash of memory brought by my real name ignited fires of confusion as more realization followed.

"Your daughter... was Lada?" But that didn't make sense. Lada had been Dusana's daughter, and Dusek's line had faded away after his death.

Follow the Line, the Spider had told me. Dusana did not answer the call.

It had meant so much more than that.

An eternity of lineage separated us, but I could see it now. His jaw - the same shape as mine, as my uncle's, as my cousin's. Mossy brown-green eyes filled with a sadness known only to the Line. Those similarities, shown to me by the Spider, that had told me he was one of us - I couldn't have guessed how much.

Lada had been Dusek's daughter, not Dusana's.

You have been lied to all your life.

Not just my life, but a hundred lives before mine had carried on a careful lie; that Dusana had answered the call; that Dusana had founded the line of Tkadlecs weaving the World; that Dusana had borne a daughter to carry her legacy.

The shuttle goes untouched by the hands of fathers and sons. It has always been so.

The soul in front of me shared an identical face with the Spider - though the lack of insane rage and slippery, writhing skin made it a slow realization - and I understood the connection at last. It hit me like lightning, like when Blue had shot out of my body to save a handful of my friends from self-destruction.

Not only the first of us, but I now knew the man before me was the first - the very first - to suffer from Weaver's Lament - to be pulled apart, body and soul. Pulled apart, and a soul left with the first demonstrable instance of Weaving the World.

"This is wrong," I said, "you shouldn't be here - I shouldn't be here! This is all wrong! I was supposed to… to come here and just fix the… the barrier." It was coming back in small jumps and spurts, but it was coming back.

"Yes," Dusek said, "that is our task, and you will join us."

"No!" I insisted. That wasn't the way, it couldn't be the way. "I'm not just a fucking patch! I came here because… because… because…" I was on the verge of it, on the edge of understanding. "I wanted it to end - no more deaths for weavers because of… because of…" I tripped over a thought of fury, a motion of clutching at my chest, of silent frustrated tears. "Because of the shuttle." A benevolent blue demon in a prison of bronze.

"Oh," Dusek sighed dreamily, "the Gift."

My grandmother withdrew from her pocket a tiny bronze shuttle, no wider than the span of her hand. "Dusana used the shuttle in all of her weavings. She found that when she weaved with the shuttle, she could wish good things into the material, and they gave those who received them good luck, or fortune, or health. Dusana started to do this with all her weavings, and her skill and strength with the gift grew."

"Her strength… with the Gift." My attention turned up to the barrier.

A hundred faces and each a part of me. I could see matching eyes here, and the fiercely squared jaw there. Expressions resigned and heads lowered as they held a weakened and threadbare barrier together through sheer force of will. A hundred faces each taken from the living world and transported here by the shuttle.

I tried to pull together my memories of what it meant to be a weaver but continued to struggle against my memories of the Tale as they battled the undiluted memory from Dusek's lips. It made the most sense to trust his version, but it contrasted so strongly with everything I knew that my head began to pound.

"What was the choice you made?" I asked them. "What was it? What am I supposed to do differently?"

They did not answer, and I didn't expect them to. "How am I supposed to know what to do if I don't know what you've already done?"

I knew their names, even if I couldn't match them to faces. I knew somewhere in there was a mother of six children who'd waited as long as possible to pass along the shuttle. I knew somewhere in there was the last survivor of her family who'd all but stared down the gun to give her family the best chance at living. I knew somewhere in there was my grandmother's mother. I knew all their names, even if they didn't know me.

But of course they wouldn't know me. Even if they'd lived long enough to see me be born, my grandmother had squirelled me away so young. I tried to think of it as a gift, as something that let me grow up without the burdens of Tkadlec legacies and the fear that followed in our tracks.

I'd always been free from the obligations of living with my family. Free from fear, even if I lived in resentment and eventually loneliness.

Free.

"I'm not here to join you,"I lifted my head so fast my neck would have cracked if I'd had a physical form. "I was meant to come find you." I frowned but it turned into a smile, "I think I'm here to set you free."

"I can't leave," Dusek laughed with incredulity, "this is my duty. This is the responsibility of all-"

"Dusek," I interrupted. "It's time to let go." I knew it in my heart of hearts.

"I can't," he whined, the pain evident in his voice.

"We can do this, Dusek." I reached out for his hand but he recoiled in fear. "We were never meant to be trapped here - it can't be the way. If we weren't meant to be here then we have to be able to finish this. We have to be able to get out. That means… we need to let go."

"What's going to happen?" he asked fearfully.

"I don't know," I admitted.

"I'm so afraid," he cried. The fear in his eyes, eyes that looked so much like mine, looked so familiar.

"I know; me too. We can be afraid together." I held my hand open, inviting him to be free. I searched his face for any yielding of fear, any hint of a desire to yield to chance.

His lip trembled, and all the confidence and certainty that I'd thought I'd seen in his form melted away. The loneliness of a thousand years that had beaten him down left him almost beyond hope.

But he took my hand.

I smiled in encouragement before I closed my eyes and even though the warm presence of the shuttle couldn't be felt I knew she was there. My bane, my Blue.

"Come," I summoned her. I pictured her face - a somber blue expression that always lingered in affection before turning to sadness - and pulled it towards me in my mind.

The space in our dimension rippled, but Blue did not appear. I frowned, focusing harder. I pushed her face to the forefront of my mind, the lingering of tears she could not shed for my sorrows, the gentle touch of her hand on my face as she tried to comfort me.

Space shivered, bending to my will but not yet breaking. I let go of Dusek's hand, reaching out towards the empty infinity. I did it purely on instinct, but it was an action I'd never done before. I reached for Blue with open arms, welcoming her into my presence by pulling on the tether of my soul and knowing that she would be at the other end. I called for her, wanting her to be there and knowing she had not abandoned me.

Space twisted and looped with a yawning howl. Some rule being defied, or some memory resurrected, she was recreated before my eyes in all her shining glory. She glowed like a new sun in the dark space and I hissed, shielding my eyes. I hadn't realized how dark it had been without her.

But Dusek did not look away or cover his eyes. Instead, he rushed forward, crying out; "Svetla!"

And Blue opened her arms to him, dimming the violent glow to a more manageable level. She was crying silent tears, reaching out glittering hands to cup his face, pressing her forehead to his.

"Star of my life," he whispered, weeping as well. "I couldn't… I forgot…" he rambled into nothing, just running his fingers through her hair. "What are you doing here?"

Three things you will need to Weave the World, my mother's memory whispered in my ear.

"I'm so sorry," Svetla wept happy tears, "It was my mistake - I was so afraid, and I couldn't save you. I tried, I tried as soon as they told me something was wrong, but I got stuck, and-" she laughed, still crying, tracing the edges of Dusek's face. "I can hardly believe it worked."

I gaped, the last of a series of puzzle pieces falling into place. Last, the Star whose light will guide you home. "You left her behind when you went to make the barrier," I said. "She wasn't with you. You had a Lion and a Raven, but no Star."

"And you," Svetla beamed at me, opening her arms to welcome me into their tight embrace, "the bravest of us all."

Numb, not knowing if or how I should refuse, I walked into the embrace. They rocked with me between them, a little damp from tears, and it felt to familial and kind that I too started to cry. I held on to them like surrogate parents, basking in the happiness and pride I had been starved of for so long.

Svetla pulled away first, her eyes lifting to the weakened barrier patched with the souls of her children and grandchildren, and wiped away her tears. "This is not where we belong, my children."

In synchrony, moving together with a power amplified by their bond, Dusek and Svetla pulled on the tethers of their souls to reshape the barrier. It resisted, shuddering against their patient hands, but it yielded one soul at a time. Svetla gathered her children like the most generous of mothers.

As she gathered the weavers, we joined in their efforts; it felt so powerful. Ten weavers, a hundred, a thousand, all pulling on the edges of the barrier to tear away the weakened portions and repair ancient damage. Weaver's hands by the thousand working in tandem, a colliding of souls and the resurgence of hope turned back the clock of time.

The last soul extracted, the last mistake forgiven, the barrier's mottled yellow and blue pattern trembled within itself. It held onto the thing it had once been as all shapes must. But soothing hands of forgiving souls and apologetic hearts laid upon it, pushing in a new pattern and new laws of attraction and bond.

We stepped past as it shook to right itself, and Tkadlec blue overtook angry yellow; drowning out the remaining spots that spoke to an unbalanced and hesitant creation.

"Now the work that should have been completed is finally done." Svetla turned a proud smile on the gathering of weavers. "My children," she greeted us, "it's time to go home."

Her soft light seemed so welcoming. Svetla's blue light wrapped around me, summoning me into her grace just as her other children were drawn into it. I felt so relaxed, so utterly at peace in the great calmness that washed over my soul, that I could think of nothing else but that eternal acceptance. We would go home together. Find peace together.

"June?!" a familiar voice called, and an orange glow beat back the cool waves of peace that had washed over me, filling me with a warmth I had nearly forgotten. My star had returned, a beautiful and perfect place too far for me to reach and without a path to follow. It made more sense to follow Svetla; her embrace was enough for all of us.

The star pulsed, its light growing with intensity until the warmth on my face nearly burned. "Stop, please! Fight it!"

I turned away from it, the light too painful and real for me to bear. Svetla's cool peace was more than enough; I had suffered enough and I was ready to rest. The orange light of that passionate star was too much for me. Too many promises of living when living had hurt so much.

But Svetla held up a hand, her face intensely kind but also sorrowful.

"Kotonok," the star murmured, warmth reverberating around me.

I lifted my head, moving out of Svetla's orbit as she commanded me to step back. I turned to face the warmer light, the light that made the agony of emotions stir back into being in my chest, and took the first breath of spring's first promised breeze.

The light softened as I tried to gaze upon it, or had I just grown immediately accustomed to it? "I know I'm not enough, but could you come back anyway? It doesn't have to be for me, just come back."

Finished gathering her lost children, Svetla set her hands on my shoulders as I bathed in warm orange light. I closed my eyes and I could hear the rustling of distant trees, feel tall blades of grass against the palm of my hand.

"What should I do?" I asked her.

"I'll wait however long I have to and we'll go home together. I won't leave without you." That light, warm but also blazing and insistent, laid a path for me to follow in my heart. It was pulling me away from the empty place, guiding me back to a world with form and limits and atoms.

"You have been following the light of another Star for some time now," Svetla explained, "so you cannot follow us."

"But I'm so tired," I sighed.

"My bravest daughter; we have one more yet to set free," Svetla whispered encouragingly, "and then you can rest."


A/N: I realized while writing this that it's been a looooong time since we reviewed the Line in any meaningful way, so I would have to walk you (the readers) through how immensely revelatory this chapter would be. Here's hoping it all came through.

Question: should the next chapter be in June's POV or Kuwabara's?

I love my reviewer, typiicaltaylor!

PLEASE REVIEW! It gives me a will to write, y'all.